Snowstorm ’08

The weekend was one where we buy a lot of beans, arm ourselves with a candle and bunker down. That’s right…yet again, we had some snow fall on us. It wasn’t a little snowdrift mind you, it was what I would like to call the mother of all storms. In fact, my manager just told me that on Saturday night we had snow, sleet, slush, thunder, lightning and frogs fall from the sky. No joke.

On Friday night, knowing that a storm was coming our way, I headed home to bunker down but Trish was brave enough to head over to our place. Vero’s plans got canceled due to the impending storm so she came over also and we headed out to the Barley Mow pub (after introducing Trish to the amazing Flight of the Conchords television show). Now, as we remember from our last trip to the Barley Mow pub, it wasn’t the best in service. But Trish wanted some pub food so I figured we would chance it.

Luckily, we had great, fast service and my meal wasn’t bad at all. You can’t go wrong with fish and chips. I don’t think Vero enjoyed her lasagna for one as it was a little too crispy (as in it’s been under the heat lamp since 2PM).

We headed home and continued our quest to watch the last season of Friends. We were triumphant and we also convinced Trish to spend the night as the roads were too bad to drive in. No one should take the chance! I think she secretly didn’t want to go home because of the fear that her driveway would not be plowed at her apartment.

The next day the weather wasn’t TOO BAD and really, there wasn’t TOO much snow on the ground. Only 20 cms I would say. Our neighbour was nice enough to shovel our walkway the night before so our boots weren’t TOO snowy to the trek to the truck. We went to Broadways for breakfast around 1:30 but my thoughts of breakfast being served until 3PM were wrong. They end at 1PM. No worries on my part, I am not a big fan of breakfast. The others were pretty bummed out though. I had a good Cajun Beef Melt along with a caesar salad. Not bad, not bad at all. Actually, now that I think of it, I’m surprised that I went to Broadways after the horrible service and food we had the time before also! Was I looking for punishment this weekend?

We headed home and felt the need to relax and watch movies for the rest of the day. We watched a few films in the afternoon, and then because I was going stir crazy, decided to take a flying leap into the backyard into the snow. There is at least five feet of snow in the backyard. Unfortunately, it was pretty hard underneath so I didn’t get the effect I was going for as we didn’t fall too far into it. It was quite hilarious to have Trish, Vero and I exploring the planet Hoth in my backyard though. The neighbours that it was quite funny.

After a great supper prepared by Mike and Vero, we settled down with some old videocassettes I had. Trish and I had this appreciation of popping in blank videocassettes and wondering what we would find on them. We ended up finding old episodes of ER, Dawson’s Creek, Joey, a documentary on Britney Spears…all in all…a treasure-trove of good times from five years ago. Afterwards we popped in some winter-fun movies like Ski School 2 and then The Shining (as Trish wanted to emulate the feeling of being stranded in the snow). I definitely fell asleep half way through The Shining as it’s not the most action packed film I’ve ever seen.

Sunday had me awake fairly early in the morning after a good sleep and I realized that I would have to get out there and shovel the driveway so that Vero could go to her play practice. It was already canceled the day before so I knew it would be important for her to head out to Sunday’s practice. I had my doubts as to whether or not there would be another practice today considering even Trish’s church was canceled! If the Lord’s house is canceled, you know it’s some bad weather!

I must admit that I felt like David vs. Goliath when I opened up the garage door into the snow mountain which lay before me. Our gracious neighbour had already shoveled the hard stuff at the end of the driveway which was great but I still had to contemplate how I would approach this precarious scenario. You see, like most people in Canada this winter, you probably have a snowbank on the edge of your driveway which is approximately fifteen feet tall. For those of you who don’t know measurements, think of five hobbits standing on top of each other and that’s how this thing is.

Now, the problem gets compounded when for every shovelful of snow you throw on top, half a shovelful falls back down due to the sheer size of the mountain of snow. Sigh…very aggravating. After two hours, we finally made it through the onslaught. There are definitely times that I wonder about the usefulness of a snowblower. 😉 I also would like to say that I really miss my old neighbour Barry who had a snowblower.

From reading the newspapers this morning, the city of Ottawa had 52 cm fall on them between the time of Friday – Saturday. The fun we had in the backyard on Saturday night is invisible to our eyes now as so much snow fell on top of it. I was talking to our neighbour who works for the Ottawa Police force and he indicated that there were talks of shutting the city down…essential service were having a hard time getting around the city. Quite the storm…but we felt the peace of a nice warm house in which we can ignore the outside world for a few hours…

Now if only my shoulders weren’t sore today from shoveling all that snow!

iplaying: Bring It All Back – The Tragically Hip (Road Apples)